Japan supplier exec indicted in price fixing

An executive at Japan's Tokai Rika Co. — a supplier to Toyota Motor Corp. — was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury in Detroit for conspiracy to fix prices and obstruction of justice.

After Tokai Rika pleaded guilty in 2012 to a U.S. Department of Justice charge of price fixing and paid a criminal fine of $17.7 million, former Executive Managing Director Hitoshi Hirano is being charged with participating in conspiracies to fix the prices of heating control panels and having employees destroy evidence of antitrust criminal behavior, the government said in a statement.

According to the indictment, Hirano met with other conspirators from October 2003 to February 2010 to agree to rig bids, allocate the supply and fix prices of the panels sold to Toyota for vehicles in the United States and other countries. The charge has a maximum sentence of 10 years and a $1 million criminal fine.

Besides Tokai Rika, 26 suppliers, most Japanese, have pleaded guilty or agreed to plead guilty to similar charges, totaling $2.3 billion in criminal fines. Thirty-four other supplier executives have also been charged with price fixing. Twenty-four have pleaded guilty or have agreed to plead guilty, and 22 have been sentenced to one-two years in prison.